Politics. Sex. Science. Art. You know, the good stuff.

Stephanie Zvan is an analyst by trade, but she's paid not to talk about it. She is also the associate president of Minnesota Atheists and one of the hosts for their radio show and podcast, Atheists Talk. She speaks on science and skepticism in a number of venues, including science fiction and fantasy conventions.

Stephanie has been called a science blogger and a sex blogger, but if it means she has to choose just one thing to be or blog about, she's decided she's never going to grow up. In addition to science and sex and the science of sex, you'll find quite a bit of politics here, some economics, a regular short fiction feature, and the occasional bit of concentrated weird.

Oh, and arguments. She sometimes indulges in those as well. But I'm sure everything will be just fine. Nothing to worry about. Nothing at all.

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EVENTS

You Can’t Always Get What You Need

The Secular Coalition for America’s damage control over the announcement of Edwina Rogers as their new Executive Director continued yesterday. Yes, I’m calling it damage control at this point.

There are things to be done to manage expectations when an organization makes an unusual choice. There’s nothing dishonest in that, simply an effort to make sure that interested parties understand as fully as possible the perspective of the people who made the choice because that perspective won’t be obvious. If it were, the choice wouldn’t be considered unusual.

In Greta’s interview with Roy Speckhardt of the SCA board (and a huge thank you to Greta for her work to get information on this to the secular community quicky), we can see that getting a very clear message to the SCA’s constituency wasn’t a big consideration.

GC: Well, OK, so, if you were expecting controversy within the movement and within the community, what did you do to prepare for that?

RS: The organization, [garbled] itself, had come up with some planning for that, and some talking points and things like that that they had prepared to reach out to the media with. And that through the media, we’d be getting that attention of folks in the movement as well. So that – some of that had been planned in advance, and I know that in the coming months, Edwina is planning to do calls and other types of outreach to get people access to her in a way that they might not normally have for somebody in her position, but it’ll also get a chance for her to connect with people and get over any problems or questions or skepticism that might exist out there.

Going through an intermediary, and particularly the disinterested intermediary of non-specialized media, is not a clear way to get your message across. Neither is not having a plan to specifically address the concerns of your specialized media (i.e., atheist bloggers, podcasters, etc.). If you want a look at how the appointment should have been announced, see Matt Dillahunty. If you want a look at what Rogers should have been prepared to face, see Crommunist. If you want a look at what she should have been prepared to say in response, see Ashley Miller.

It isn’t a bad post. It says some things that would have been well said on the day the press release about Rogers came out. It provides background on the pragmatics of the SCA’s decision, much as Speckhardt did when he refered to lobbying the SCA had previously done with Republicans using a wedge of states’ rights. It says some of the same things Rogers has been saying about the lack of uniformity among Republicans on religous issues.

And this is where the problems with the piece are. It isn’t bad, but it isn’t addressing the concerns that most of us who are writing and talking about this actually have. Here is the comment I left on the post yesterday.

I don’t think any of us left-leaning secularists need to be told that separation of church and state is an issue that should be of importance to the deeply religious as well as to people like atheists. After all, we have a history of supporting institutions like the ACLU, which champions religious freedom no matter the religion. We have also claimed this as one of our own talking points for quite some time.

I think instead that many of us have a concern that any efforts to “reach across the aisle” will be met with the same reception the ACLU has received. Do many Republicans feel that the party is too beholden to religious interests? Well, that’s probably because the party has made explicit efforts to court that base for the last several decades. They have also made explicit efforts to maintain strong adherence to party positions in individual Republican lawmakers in DC, whatever those lawmakers’ personal beliefs.

Now, none of that means an effort to court Republicans is doomed. It does, however, mean that doubt on the matter is reasonable. It means it’s widespread and should be respected. Not given into–the SCA has made it’s choice and has, as an organization, earned consideration of its choices–but treated seriously. Yes, there may be opportunities. There are also large obstacles that anyone who is politically inclined can see. Please don’t try to set any of us up to think this may be easy.

Personally, I would much rather hear what success for this strategy is supposed to mean. There is a little of that here, but it is vague. What will Republican consideration of secular interests look like? On what specific issues can they be motivated to act in our interests? How many of them? How will the SCA measure whether this has succeeded or failed?

(Note: The SCA was kind enough to let me know they’re not currently releasing any comments on that post. I’m not entirely sure I blame them. While they’ve accepted comments in the past and that is a blog in the technical sense, they’ve never received very many. They also don’t seem to have had anyone who is an active presence in the comments. Now is not a good time for anyone there to be learning how to do that and making n00b mistakes.)

At this point, a plan for going forward is the only thing that’s going to be satisfying. Rogers and the SCA are answering our questions but in such a nonspecific way that we feel like we’re chewing on cotton candy. What we’re seeing now is reactive, not the leadership that can win us over. They’re filling in the picture in such a way that we can all tell there are still big gaps in what’s supposed to happen next.

It’s time to stop. It’s time to say, “Look. We were excited. We made an announcement without everything in place. We’re going to take some time to fix that and get back to you.” Then they need to go develop a strategy, something detailed and realistic that tells us how Rogers plans to exploit the opportunities she’s told us are there.

We don’t have to agree with it. We just have to be convinced that there’s thought and planning behind it. We have to know, too, where this is expected to go, what results will tell us whether this strategy is working. That we need to get Republicans on our side (assuming we can’t get them out of office) doesn’t guarantee that anyone can make this happen. We want to know the SCA’s support for their new director doesn’t override the need to make sure her Republican-centric strategy is working and to know that if it doesn’t–if it turns out to be much easier to persuade a legislator of something they already generally agree with–there are mechanisms in place to determine this and to change course.

Convincing us this will work is a monumental task. Frankly, it’s more than anyone can reasonably promise us. That we’ll just have to be shown. So now it’s time for the SCA to let up on the convincing and tell us how they’re going to do that.

We also need to hear some kind of answer on why Rogers apparently denied that the Republican party platform is not explicitly anti-choice, why she cited some weird obfuscatory stats she claims to half-remember from the mid-90s that obscures the extent of anti-choice sentiment in the modern GOP voting base, etc. She told some fibs in the Greta Christina interview, and we all know they are fibs. In one form or another, Rogers needs to answer for the fibbing. Until that happens, I don’t see a way forward that’s going to placate most people.

I think we also need to be told how much more evasion and dishonesty we should expect from Rogers, and also from the SCA board.

If you want to represent me, or this community in general, you need to provide clear, direct, and honest answers to our questions. Wishy-washy politicianese isn’t going to cut it, because we have critical thinking skills and don’t buy that shit.

After reading Youngblood’s piece, I disagree entirely.
My message to the Republicans who are unhappy with the direction that the party has been going:Stop voting for Republicans. It really is that simple. If you are a secularist, someone who favors eliminating religious influences from government and basing policy on facts and reality, the Republican party has nothing to offer. If you claim to favor these things and still vote for and otherwise support Republican politicians, then you are lying when you say you are a secularist. It is that simple. A vote for any politician with an R after their name is, at this point in history, a vote for bigotry, a vote for theocracy, and a vote for faith-based solutions to reality based problems.

John, the diplomacy on my part involves me thinking strategically (diplomatically) about whether there’s an upside to dealing with those comments. There’s definitely none in dealing with them poorly, which a lot of people not used to managing controversy in their comments do. I’m very serious when I say I’d like the SCA to stop and think about how they’re communicating this, instead of doing it badly on a catch-up basis.

As for those talking about “fibbing”, I don’t know that Rogers is being any less honest with us than she is with herself. I’m not going to keep demanding answers because the first ones aren’t “honest” when they may just be dead wrong. So Rogers’ reasons for thinking there is an opportunity don’t convince me. They don’t have to if she can actually do what she thinks she can. Right now, that’s what I really want her and the SCA to address–what she’ll do and how we’ll evaluate what I think is a high-risk strategy (and will whatever justifications they offer).

I don’t know. I have some doubt about the usefulness of a strategy to get the Republicans on board when it isn’t clear we actually have the Democrats yet. For the most part, we seem to assume the Democrats are with us, but they seem to be much more in the line of DADT. They’re not comfortable with us, they try to gloss over our existence, and they’re not willing to stand up and be counted as advocates for freedom FROM religion as well as freedom OF religion. If we can’t even get our allies behind us, why are we heading off to play footsie with our sworn enemies?

I didn’t immediately jump to dismiss Rogers, but I’ve been a bit uncomfortable from the beginning; now I’m a lot uncomfortable.

So Rogers’ reasons for thinking there is an opportunity don’t convince me. They don’t have to if she can actually do what she thinks she can. Right now, that’s what I really want her and the SCA to address–what she’ll do and how we’ll evaluate what I think is a high-risk strategy (and will whatever justifications they offer).

Fair enough; time will tell.

(She thinks she can organise for a chapter per State; I don’t think that’s problematic, sufficient donations being available.

Whether those chapters shall support advocacy for what the movement to which she maintains she is supposedly committed, time will also tell)

That secular.org article is great, or would be if the complaint were the the SCA shouldn’t be working with Republicans. It isn’t. The complaint is that if Rogers is a hired gun, she shouldn’t be director and that she is either deluded or lying abotu the Republican Party.

As for those talking about “fibbing”, I don’t know that Rogers is being any less honest with us than she is with herself.

I find it hard to believe that she is unaware that the majority of Republican voters today are anti-choice, or that she doesn’t know that official GOP platform documents are explicitly anti-choice and anti-gay. I used the word “fib” instead of “lie” because she didn’t come out and say those things; she just said things like, “I’m not aware of any document that says you can’t be pro-choice [and still be a Republican]”. We can’t quite classify that as “false”: no document says you can’t be pro-choice, they merely say that anti-choice is the official position of the GOP; and the “I’m not aware” gives her plausible deniability.

But she was still lobbing some serious spin in our direction, and the implications were flat-out false — and easy to determine with five minutes of Googling.

Anyway, when I say she has to “answer” for it, I don’t necessarily have anything specific in mind. Maybe there’s nothing that even can be said at this point. I’m just saying, those fibs — and I stand by my characterization of them as fibs — are sitting there like a pail of dirty diapers, and something’s gotta be done about the smell. Not sure what… but something…

I feel like maybe neither Rogers nor the SCA realize/d that Rogers is no longer working for Republicans (nor Democrats, for that matter), but skeptics who are used to questioning things and discarding bullshit information/answers. Lying to us (either with intent or as the result of ignorance that could be solved by a minute or two of web searches) isn’t going to make us feel warm and fuzzy, but piss us off. I think an answer like, “Working for the Republican party, I was lying so I could make lots of money,” would have been much better received (still not universally welcomed); transparent bullshit is exactly the worst course possible.